Family gap year in Costa Rica, living overseas, traveling with kids

test run

Hey all, so this is our first post about our upcoming adventure. So Palmer and I have decided to quit our jobs and sell our house in the Boston area, and move our family (Oscar is almost 5 and Alice is 2) to Costa Rica for a year. Whoa…a little crazy, right? I thought so too at first, but it’s now so exciting and we’re well on our way to making it all happen. The countdown is on as we leave in just 11 days! Pretty surreal.

We first discovered Costa Rica as a family for a short visit in January 2017. We spent some time checking out some authentic Tico towns in the Central Valley before heading to the Pacific Coast and exploring Manuel Antonio National Park. What an amazing few days it was – from unique mountain towns surrounded by coffee and banana plantations and beautiful vistas at every turn to the warm waters of the coast with forests filled with monkeys, sloths and scarlet macaws. This experience confirmed our decision that Costa Rica was definitely the place where we wanted to spend at least a year being immersed in a new culture, spending more time together as a family and slowing down the pace of our hectic lives. It was of course just a short vacation, but we are so excited to experience a deeper connection, improve our Spanish, watch the kids grow and be part of a different culture, and be active members of a local community. See below a bunch of photos from our exploratory trip. Stay tuned for what we’ve done since January to prepare for taking the big leap!